Melyssa-with-a-Y

Friday night Alex took me out for a belated birthday night. We went to a Cuban restaurant on 6th Street. We had mojitos (he'd never had one), I had ropa vieja with platanos fritos, and he had a traditional Cuban pork sandwich. I haven't had good Cuban food since my business trips to Miami in 2002-2003. This was excellent. We had to take our desserts "to-go" ... which is fine with a coconut empanada, but not so good with the flan. (So he gave his flan to another diner in the restaurant.) We'll definitely have to go back there. Then we went to Esther's Follies , but it wasn't the regular comedy show, it was the Latino Comedy Project . It was hilarious. We laughed SO hard -- fortunately A is not bothered by the fact that I laugh really loudly -- he was louder than I was! There were some anti-Dubya jokes and songs (there's one white guy in the group, so he got to be Shrub), and some fake "commercials," which you can see on their website. They did...

Ok, that just sounds weird. Almost as weird as the thought of Tony Danza playing the role of Max Bialystock in the Producers . As one columnist said, "I wish that was a joke, but it's not." I get it, he's a song-and-dance man. I wish I could say confidently that he's a good actor, but with only Who's the Boss as reference, who knows? Having seen the Broadway production more than once (with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick) :) , I just wonder how the audience will react -- particularly to a skinny Max. Many of the jokes are funnier because Max is a bit... zaftig. But if Susan Stroman thinks he can do it, then I wish him well. After all, Matthew Broderick's first run was really a direct channeling of Gene Wilder's Leo Bloom in the (original) movie . It took him a while to make the role his own. So good luck, Tony. (oops, I mean, "Break a leg!") While we're on the subject, Uma Thurman as Ulla in the new movie ? AWFUL. I will say that Will ...